Aesthetic medicine receives criticism for its lack of regulations and places great emphasis on the importance of procedures being carried out solely by medical practitioners. However, outside the fact that any lay person can be trained, medical practitioners are allowed to perform aesthetic treatments after only a one-day training course. Following my own experience on these courses, I personally do not believe they provide adequate training to allow practitioners to venture into the complex and potentially high-risk world of injectable fillers. This article aims to explain why, as well as what I believe practitioners should seek to do instead.
A typical one-day course commonly provides a morning of theory and observation of one patient and an afternoon of supervision, usually with each student treating one, or even just practising on a dummy. The student is usually then certified to…
